


A Coin With Two Sides

by levicas



Category: A Darker Shade of Magic
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:26:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6772738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levicas/pseuds/levicas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holland can't remember the last time his body was his own. Now that it is, it feels foreign to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Coin With Two Sides

**Author's Note:**

> Holland/Kell if you squint, I suppose. 
> 
> Okay, so Holland is my favourite character from ADSOM, and I just wish he would make better life choices already. So, this is me preparing myself for his redemption arc in ACOL (I'm counting on you, Schwab, don't let me down).
> 
> Why are my faves always so problematic? I can't help it, I love this beautiful bastard.

He felt the moment Osaron disappeared, because he crumbled. He hadn't realised how thin his resolve had become, somewhere along the line he'd gone from fighting, screaming, to pleading and cowering. The latter was enough to send him sprawling to the ground the moment the force holding him up had evaporated. And yes, he felt the air begin to cool, saw the black clouds pull back to reveal the pale blue of the sky above. Hopefully, the rest of the damage he'd caused could be as easily fixed. 

It was only a dull thought, in the back of his mind. He didn't care for it, not when all he could feel was the pain. Nothing but the shock, and the rawness inside him, like his insides had been churned around and spat out by something grotesque. His body was his own again. 

Grateful. He should've been grateful, but the feeling was so foreign to him. His fingers twitched, and they were his. He fluttered his eyelids, and those were his, too. But, despite the relief, he wasn't sure he liked it all that much. Because if his body was his own again, that meant his pain was, too. And his guilt.

He'd lived the fight like he'd fought it himself. He'd watched Kell and Osaron battle one another, admiring Kell's skill. He'd improved over the past months, and Holland was glad for it. Even if it meant he now had to suffer the hollowness inside him that he hoped was caused more by guilt than by missing a master.

And he'd watched Kell bleed. He was good, but so was Osaron. Both of them had bled, and Holland had watched his own essence leave him without really feeling it. It wasn't him, after all, just his body. Nonetheless, the fault was his own. 

He could have died, before. Should have. Kell knew it, and he'd said it in as many words. After all, if Holland had let himself die in Black London, he would have died free. His last breath, a free one. But he'd been a coward, taken an offer he should have known he was too weak to control. 

But he'd always been a fool. He realised it like a weight dropping onto his chest. Watched Kell as Kell watched him. In pain, like he was. Red hair plastered to his face with sweat, legs trembling slightly as if they were made of water. But Holland could barely feel anything at all. Numbness, clawing its way through him. Reminding him he didn't deserve to feel slighted. All of this was on him. 

He remembered, distantly, a time before. Under the control of the Danes, but Kell hadn't known that. And Kell had looked up to him, almost like a little brother. He'd wondered if, without a family of his own, perhaps he could craft one for himself. Two of a kind, they'd been. Bound to different worlds and different kings, but two sides of the same coin.

He dug his fingers into the ground below him, tried to push himself up. Failed. A deep, ragged breath was torn out of him. It sounded weak even to his own ears, and he collapsed again. 

And then, like a miracle, Kell was by his side, pulling him up. Holding him. Carrying him, for some reason. No longer stone beneath him, just Kell's arms and the air. He wanted to ask where he was being taken, but his eyes kept falling shut and his tongue felt impossibly large inside his mouth. Besides, he didn't think he even had a voice anymore. And if he did, he didn't particularly want to hear it. Not that voice that had been used against him, against Ojka, against Kell. Against so many others. Scared, like a craven, that he'd still hear the deep resonation of Osaron's voice inside his own.

A gasp. Not enough sense of himself to figure out where it came from. He thought they were inside now. The sound might have come from the left, or perhaps the right. But it was a woman's voice, that much he was certain, one he only recognised very distantly.

"Kell, what--"

"Are you alright?" A man's voice this time, one he definitely recognises. Prince Rhy. He tried to turn his face away, but he didn't know where the Prince was, only that he was near. 

He couldn't hear Kell's response, only the faint him of his voice that sounded miles away, but soft like a lullaby. Gruff, still, like he was frowning. Always frowning, that one. He didn't mind not being able to distinguish the words. Because, relaly, he didn't think he had the strength to listen to Kell's disappointment right now. Kell had said it before, when Osaron had taken over, said what Holland had tried so hard not to think, not to be, for so long.

Weak.

_Prove to me that you're not weak._

He'd yelled it, voice thick with desperation. And Holland had tried, he really had. But Osaron had been stronger, and Holland been locked away inside himself. Forced to watch as his hands had been used to tear worlds to pieces. His London, or Kell's. It didn't matter. Neither one's destruction was worth the life of the other. He'd been selfish. 

Perhaps his world had been dying for a reason, because it was full of people like the Danes, and like him. People who were weak and cruel and easily corruptible. Kell's London was different. Because it was full of people like Kell, and Rhy. He hadn't met a great deal of Red Londoners, but if at least half of them were like Kell, then he was sure the place must be a dream.

Listening to the dulled whisper of Kell's voice, he drifted out of consciousness. At last.

* * *

Voices woke him, but he kept his eyes shut as he tried to figure out where he was. The pain was a dull glow at the edge of his mind now, something that could be ignored if he tried hard enough. How much of that was himself healing and how much of it was the softness beneath him, he didn't know. All he knew was that he'd never laid upon something so soft in all his life. It was like lying on a cloud.

A bed, somewhere. A logically conclusion to draw. Of course, Kell's London would be full of beds made of dove's feathers, or something ridiculous like that. 

"Father wants him executed."

Ah, the voices were talking about him. He kept his eyes shut, because some part of him would always be a little bit deceitful, and he wasn't stupid enough to think they'd keep talking freely if they knew he was awake. 

" _Father_ wants a lot of things," a female voice said. The one from before, full of scorn. 

"He tore up half of London. He almost started a war with the Veskans. And in case you're forgetting, he tried to kill all three of us." Rhy's voice was angrier than he'd ever heard it. Usually somewhat petulant, as could be expected of a young prince. But now he sounded stately, kingly, in fact. 

"You don't understand." This voice was Kell's. He knew it like he knew himself. And Kell sounded calmer than he had done since he'd heard it last. Albeit, whenever he'd heard it over the last few months it had been because Osaron was trying to kill him, or worse. 

He'd hated him once, while he sat on his White throne. Kell, so lucky in his beautiful, magical, living London while Holland was stuck in a destitute wasteland. Things had changed since then. Osaron had happened, in so many ways. But he couldn't blame Osaron for everything, and he hoped Kell wouldn't either. Some things had been Holland's idea, his own selfish plans to take his own dire situation and force it onto someone else. Let Kell's world fall into blackness instead of his. All so he could watch his white world thrive.

But he was Antari, and he could never belong to just one world. Not when he could see them all.

"You don't know what it's like to be Antari," Kell continued. "So little we do is for ourselves."

"Kell," Rhy said, sounding softer now. 

"I'm your brother, Rhy, but your parents aren't mine. They're my...gaolers. I've worked for them since I can remember, thinking they loved me like a son--"

"They do."

"If you believe that, then you're a fool."

Rhy was silent. Holland heard him cross the room and take a seat. He breathed deeply.

All this time, he had assumed Kell was free. Holland hadn't known, hadn't even expected, that Kell had been trapped in a prison of his own. Not quite as he had been, with the Danes, but just as hollow. Just as lonely.

"Why didn't you leave?" Rhy's voice was small, quiet. Desperate.

"You know why," replied Kell. "And you know why I can't let them execute him."

A beat. A sigh. And then,

"Yeah," Rhy said. "I can talk him out of it."

"No need," Holland said. 

"Eavesdropping is rude," the woman said. Girl - she was younger than Holland had been expecting. She was sat crossed-legged on the end of the bed, pinning him down with eyes like vices. Eyes that were two different shades of brown, one of them moving slightly slower than the other, almost imperceptible. Possibly, most didn't even notice it. Intriguing. "So is staring."

"You're not dying," Kell said. Holland opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself when Kell glared at him. "Dying's too easy. I understand why you did it, but you still let Osaron in. This is still on you."

"I know." The _I'm sorry_ , he hoped, was implied. He didn't think he could say the world aloud. Not with the girl and the prince watching him with distrust. Perhaps, if he and Kell were alone, but he wasn't foolish enough to think that was likely any time soon. "What are you going to do with me?" 

Kell cast a look to Rhy, then to the girl. She raised an eyebrow, and, behind her, Rhy nodded reluctantly.

"Nothing," Kell said. "You have to live with everything you caused, and hope that one day you'll have done enough good to atone for it."

Holland nodded. It was almost merciful. Almost. "What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know."

"I do," the girl grinned impishly. "How do you boys feel about sailing?"

**Author's Note:**

> And then they all sailed off around the world(s) and lived happily every after. 
> 
> What? A girl can hope.


End file.
